Document Conversion and Network Database System

ABSTRACT

A method for providing data to clients of multiple unrelated subscribers on a distributed computer network including maintaining a main document set database including text-containing documents for clients of the multiple unrelated subscribers, forming for each unrelated subscriber a corresponding home document set comprising text-containing documents selected from the main document set database, receiving from a linked computer a request by a subscriber client for read-only access to a text-containing document from the subscriber home document set, before providing access by the client to the text-containing document from the subscriber home document set, automatically performing in the distributed computer network modifications being associated solely with the client&#39;s subscriber to the text of the text-containing document, and allowing read-only access from client computers linked to the distributed computer network by clients of each subscriber to only the text-containing documents containing the modified text of the client&#39;s subscriber.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/549,216 filed Jul. 13, 2012, which is a continuation of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/020,493, filed Dec. 21, 2004, now issued as U.S.Pat. No. 8,224,785 which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 09/945,456, filed Aug. 30, 2001, now issued as U.S. Pat. No.6,839,881 which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No.09/153,786, filed Sep. 16, 1998, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 6,374,274,the entire contents of both of which are hereby incorporated herein byreference.

APPENDIX A

Appendix A is a hard copy printout of the assembly listing consisting of37 pages, including the title page. This assembly listing is subject tocopyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to thereproduction of the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent andTrademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves allcopyright rights whatsoever.

BACKGROUND

The present invention relates to communication networks, and moreparticularly to networks providing document access to authorizedsubscribers.

One application of information retrieval systems is to provide (bydisplay, printing, or other appropriate means) a collection of documentsthat is directed to a particular field, so that a particular set ofauthorized users can select and retrieve a desired portion of thecollection. One example of such a system for use in the office of aprofessional practice has a terminal connected to a memory device havingthe collection accessible to it (such a collection of video tapes orcompact disk ROM being selectively inserted into a compatible driveunit), the terminal controlling the drive unit to access desiredportions of particular ones of the media having documents of interest toclients of the practice. Unfortunately, such systems are expensive toprovide, set up, and maintain in that all of the costs must beattributed to a single practice. Also, the set up and maintenancefrequently requires skills that are not readily available on site.

A recent development is the wide use of network communications over theInternet, on which a wide variety of information is available in massivevolumes using local telephone connections and personal computers. TheInternet is actually a collection of networks and gateways that use theTransport Control Protocol/Interface Program (TCP/IP) suite of protocolsthat was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. The localtelephone connections are typically to nearby network server computers(servers) that have connections to other servers. Documents and otherinformation are commonly stored on the Internet using Hyper TextTransfer Protocol (HTTP) in HTML or ASP format in web sites that areimplemented at associated servers, the sites being addressed andnavigated by using “browser” software of user's computers. The HTTPversion 1.1 (outlined in detail in RFC 2068 athttp:www.csl.sony.co.jp/cgibin/hyperrfc?rfc2068.txt) specifies that upontransmission of each requested element, the browser disconnects from theserver. Thus the protocol as defined is “connectionless” in that asingle continuous connection is not maintained while browsing a website.A great advantage of this technology is that a large segment of thegeneral population has access to the Internet from home. However, muchof that information is of questionable validity, especially whenprovided free of charge, and the location of relevant information can bea daunting task that involves sifting through great volumes ofextraneous records.

Consequently, a number of Internet and other computer database servicesthat are restricted to paying subscribers have been developed. Theseservices are commercially viable for business applications; however,they are often excessively expensive and difficult to use in relation totheir utility for infrequent personal use.

Also, many such services that need to identify users cause authorizationinformation to be transmitted and permanently stored on users' computerhard disk drives. Traditionally Internet servers identify a user bytransmitting the requested data along with a special plain text filecalled a “cookie” which is stored on the user's computer disk memory andcan have values written thereto by the server. These cookies typicallycontain information like the user's name and miscellaneous data that isread back each time the user connects and makes a request, typically foreach page or element thereof as indicated above. These cookies areobjectionable in that it can contain “viruses” that are known to beharmful to the users' computers. Accordingly, web browsers of the priorart pop up a dialog box that asks whether the user will accept thecookie, further creating an inconvenience to the user. If the userrefuses the cookie, then continuity is effectively broken between thebrowser and the server.

Thus there is a need for a reliable source of information that isrelevant to clients of professional practices, that is easily accessedand selected by authorized users, that monitors or tracks user accesssessions without requiring users to accept cookies, and that isinexpensive to set up and maintain without requiring high levels ofspecialized skill by employees of particular practices having clientsthat are authorized users.

SUMMARY

The present invention meets this need by providing a network databasesystem wherein clients of subscribing entities are authorized networkaccess to reliable documents that are identified by each entity as beingrelevant to clients of that entity. Features that can be included in thesystem are customization of the documents to reflect sourcing byparticular subscribers, automated formatting of the documents forstoring in a network database, client access facilitated bysubscriber-maintained databases, and the avoidance of cookies remainingon clients' computer hard drives following document access. It will beunderstood that while the term “cookie” can include transmitted andstored codes that do not remain following network access and istherefore not considered harmful, as used herein the term is exclusiveof transmitted access data that does not remain stored in the client'scomputer following termination of network access.

DRAWINGS

These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the presentinvention will become better understood with reference to the followingdescription, appended claims, and accompanying drawings, where:

FIG. 1 is a plan view of a database system according to the presentinvention being connected to a computer database;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart for a document conversion macro of the system ofFIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart for an index preparation portion of the macro ofFIG. 2

FIG. 4 is a flow chart for an convert document portion of the macro ofFIG. 2;

FIG. 5 is a navigation path diagram for a subscriber entity portion ofthe system of FIG. 1; and

FIG. 6 is a navigation path diagram for a client network access to thesystem of FIG. 1.

DESCRIPTION

The present invention is directed to a document conversion and networkdatabase system that is particularly effective in providing relevantdocument data to authorized clients of subscriber entities. Withreference to FIGS. 1-6 of the drawings, a network database system 10includes a primary computer 12 for receiving and processing data from aprovider 13, a subscriber computer 14, and a client computer 16, each ofthe computers 12, 14, and 16 being connectable to a distributed computernetwork 18. In an exemplary implementation, the computer network 18includes a multiplicity of communication lines 20 and a plurality ofserver computers 22. One such server, designated 22A, is a primaryserver that is set up in a conventional manner for directingcommunications on the network 18 and having additional features inaccordance with the present invention that are described below.Optionally, the primary server 22A is principally associated with theprimary computer 12 (by a local telephone connection); moreover, theprimary computer 12 can be integrated with the primary server 22A.Another server, designated 22B, communicates with the subscribercomputer 14, and a further server, designated 22C, communicates with theclient computer 16. It will be understood that a single server maycommunicate with more than one of the computers 12, 14, and 16. Further,it is contemplated that the system includes a plurality of thesubscriber computers 14, multiple counterparts of the client computers16 for each of the subscriber computers 14 and, possibly, a plurality ofthe primary computers 12. In the exemplary implementation describedherein, the communication network 18 is the Internet, with at least someof the communication lines 20 being conventional telephone utilitylines, each computer having a suitable modem or digital port (not shown)for interfacing with the telephone utility lines. As used herein, eachof the servers 22 other than the primary server 22A is considered to bea part of a composite network, designated 18′.

A principal feature of the present invention is that the primarycomputer 12 is implemented for automatically customizing selecteddocuments of the provider to identify the subscriber, and optionally theclient, and reformatting the selected documents to facilitate navigationtherein by the subscriber's clients. The clients selectively access andnavigate the documents using communications between the client computer16 and the client server 22C. The primary computer 12 includes a CDROMdrive 24 for receiving and inputting source disks 25 that may beperiodically received from the provider 13. The computer 12 may alsoinclude a high-density disk drive 26 for writing processed counterpartsof the received data on output disks 27 for delivery to the primaryserver 22A. It will be understood that the CDROM drive 24 and thehigh-density drive 26 can be a single device, and further that theprocessed data can be transmitted to the primary server 22A over thenetwork 18 instead of being delivered on the high-density disks. Asuitable primary server 22A can be implemented with the server computer22 running WINDOWS NT 4.0, MICROSOFT INTERNET INFORMATION server 4.0,MICROSOFT INDEX server, MICROSOFT SITE-SERVER EXPRESS, MICROSOFT ACTIVESERVER PAGES, MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 6.5, and MICROSOFT TRANSACTION SERVERthat are commercially available programs of Microsoft Corp. of Redmond,Wash., the uppercase terms being believed to be respective trademarks ofMicrosoft.

According to the present invention, the server 22A is further programmedfor authorizing and tracking client access as described below inconnection with a subscriber and client database that can be implementedin the above-identified SQL Server program.

Document Conversion

The source disk 25 preferably contains the data from the provider 13 ina plurality of document files, one or more index files, and one or moremap files, illustrations, the map files defining links to relateddocuments and images. In an exemplary implementation, the various filesare stored as compressed text files in American Standard for InformationInterchange (ASCII) format. Typically, certain text is delimited withspecial codes, such as by being enclosed in brackets, as “[ . . . ]”.Preferably, the text files have imbedded tags for delimiting titles,subtitles, sections, headers, footers, etc. However, HTML tags areappropriately locatable for aesthetically formatting the documents andfacilitating navigation thereof based on the document structure alone,without reliance on imbedded tags being in the raw ASCII files. Forexample, titles and subtitles may be identified by having a length ofonly one line.

As shown in FIG. 2, a document conversion process 50 is operable whenthe source disk 25 is mounted in the CD drive 24. The process includes aconventional decompress step 52 wherein compressed file archives of theprovider 13 on the disk 25 are decompressed and each of the resultingfiles is copied as ASCII text in a suitable hard disk memory workingdirectory 53 of the primary computer 12. Next, a suitable word processorprogram is entered in a start word process step 54 and a conversionmacro 56 is invoked for processing the source text as described herein.Suitable word processor programs include Microsoft Word 7.0 and MACWORD, as appropriate for suitable IBM-compatible and MACINTOSHimplementations of the primary computer 12, each program being availablefrom Microsoft Corp., MACINTOSH being believed to be a trademark ofApple Computer Corp. In each of these implementations, the conversionmacro 56 is appropriately coded in VISUAL BASIC, also available fromMicrosoft Corp.

In the conversion macro 56, the working directory 53 as well as a targetdirectory are determined in an initialize step 58, and linkmap anddocmap files therein are opened in an open map step 60. In theinitialize step 58, one of several possible modules of the files isselectable according to available categories of the information. Forexample in the case of medical documents, exemplary categories are AdultHealth, Pediatric Health, Behavioral Health, Women's Health, etc. asfurther enumerated in the above-referenced listing of Appendix A. Theworking directory can be a particular subdirectory having the selectedcategory of documents. Next, a file is read from the top of thedirectory 53 in a read first file step 62, and a loop 63 is enteredwherein a test index step 64 is performed. This test is firstly on thefilename main part for bypassing signon and menu files, for example, andsecondly on the extension, also bypassing “*.art” artholder files, thetest branching to a prepare index step 66 that is described below inconnection with FIG. 3 if the extension is “.idx”. If not, controladvances to test article step 68 that for normal articles and similarfiles such as credits and menus branches to a convert article step 70that is described below in connection with FIG. 4. Otherwise in eachcase of bypassing, the macro advances to a read next file step 72,followed by a test done step 74 whereby the loop 63 is repeated unlessthere was no next file, in which the macro 56 ends, completing theprocess 50.

As shown in FIG. 3, the prepare index step 66 includes a strip step 76for removing non-index lines from the current (index) file. A variable ηis set to “A” in a set topic pointer step 78, whereupon a loop 80 isentered in which a get section step 82 finds lines that begin with theletter η, with allowance for the absence of topics having thatidentification, and further allowance for the topic having subheadings.Next, in a convert links step 84, index links are converted to HTMLlinks, and the section η is replaced in an insert section step 86.Predefined top and bottom content is then added to the file in an addboilerplate step 88, that content being next modified (by specifying asubindex name, etc.) to be consistent with the selected module in aspecialize boilerplate step 90, after which the current index portion issaved in a save subindex step 92. The topic letter η is then incrementedin an increment pointer step 94, and a test loop step 96 is performedfor repeating the loop 88 until done, in which case control is returnedto the main portion of the macro 56.

As shown in FIG. 4, the convert article step 70 first finds and replacesembedded tags of the current raw article file with corresponding HTMLcommented tags in a convert tags step 98. Text that is delimited withspecial characters is located, and corresponding HTML delimeters aresubstituted therefor in a special text step 100. Particularly, boldedtext in the raw ASCII files is delimited by brackets (“ . . . [boldedtext] . . . ”), being changed by the special text step 100 to “ . . .<b>bolded text</b> . . . ”. A window title and a displayed article titleare created in a create title step 102 that also adds top and bottomHTML tags to the file. Unused header information is then hidden bycomment codes, and delimited with appropriate tags in a hide header step104.

Typically, the raw ASCII file has a footer containing a copyrightnotice, there being a need for improving the form and content of thenotice. Accordingly, the footer/copyright information is segregated withlines and italics being added in a convert footer step 106. Also, ifthere are sets of tags delimiting reformatted text that should not bealtered (such as lists, menus and tables), tags delimiting such text arechanged to corresponding HTML tags in a convert preformat step 108. Forexample “<!-- /btable --> . . . table text . . . <!-- /btable -->” ischanged to “<pre> . . . </pre>”. Next, a document anchor step 110establishes a document target name at the top of the file in HTMLformat, and extracts external target articles and artwork using thelinkmap and docmap files, and imbeds corresponding HTML links.

Following the document anchor step 110, a section links step 112 selectssection headings and adds copies thereof at the top of the article, thecopies being hot-linked into the article body. The section links step112 makes use of imbedded tags (if present) and structuralcharacteristics of the raw ASCII file to identify the section headings.Next, a paragraphs step 114 converts imbedded paragraph tags to HTMLparagraph tags. In the case of indented paragraphs, that text isdelimited by “<bodyquote> . . . indented text . . . </bodyquote>” tags.Simple bulleted lists are then converted from reformatted text intoproperly formatted HTML lists in a make lists step 116. More complexlists are also reformatted, if feasible; otherwise they are left asreformatted text.

Finally, predefined top and bottom content is then added to the file inan add boilerplate step 118, for providing a consistent appearance inall article files. That content is next modified in a specializedboilerplate step 120 using predefined markers having the actual modulename, etc. as in the above-described specialize boilerplate step 90 ofFIG. 3.

Upon completion of the conversion macro 56, the document and indexfiles, stored in HTML/ASP format are transmitted by any suitable meansto the primary server 22A. As an alternative to using the high-densitydisk 27 as described above, the files can be uploaded by transmissionover the network 18.

Subscriber Navigation

In the exemplary Internet implementation of the system 10, the primaryserver 22A has a default web page that is addressable from thesubscriber computer 14 and any of the client computers 16. As shown inFIG. 5, a subscriber navigation path 130 permits a subscriber to set upa practice-specific home page using a new site selection option 132 fromthe default page, designated 134. In a practitioner registrationprocess, after appropriate information concerning the site is enteredusing a series of screens, a username and password for the site isgenerated at the primary server 22A, and a virtual website is created asdescribed below. As indicated in FIG. 5, this information is notimmediately available to the subscriber, being subsequently e-mailed(following verification of financial arrangements if desired), theprimary server 22A being implemented in a conventional manner forcommunicating the username and password to the subscriber computer 14.Alternatively, the subscriber's username and password can be passed overthe network 18 to be displayed on the subscriber computer 14 and savedby the subscriber.

The subscriber navigation path 130 also includes a practitioner loginpath 136 that is password protected according to the present invention.Once the subscriber has transmitted the username and password to theprimary server 22A, the server transmits corresponding codes directed toa username and password header portion of the web browser being run inthe subscriber computer. Thus in subsequent browser requests directed tothe family of web page locations, the same username and password isautomatically passed to the server 22A as a part of the request. This isan important feature of the present invention that avoids the risks andinconvenience of the subscriber computer 14 having to accept cookiesfrom the server 22A, which cookies might possibly contain harmfulviruses. Appropriate coding for passing the username and password intothe appropriate header field of the subscriber's or client's web browseris included in the ODBC program module of the primary server 22A, thedetails of such code being within the skill of the web-serverprogramming art.

Following successful login, control passes to an administration page 138from which the subscriber can generate and maintain clientdata/statistics using a stats window 140, the client data being retainedby the primary server 22A in the above-identified SQL server. Thesubscriber can also authorize new users in an authorize window 142, oramend the previously entered site data in an information window 144.Additionally, the subscriber can access the above-described converteddocuments from a practitioner home page 146, from which an index window148 facilitates identification of sought-for information. A new andcompletely different virtual website is created for each practitioner ofthe subscriber that completes the practitioner registration process.Thus another important feature of the present invention is that althoughthe registration process of the new site path 132 process requires onlyfive to ten minutes to complete, the resulting practice-specific websiteappears to have required hours of highly skilled labor to produce, justfor the practitioner's clients. The practitioners may efficientlypromote themselves with these websites, extending the client educationalmaterials of the converted documents to the clients with very littleeffort.

Client Navigation

As shown in FIG. 6, clients of any of the subscribers can also accessthe default web page 134 from a client computer 16 as described above inconnection with FIG. 5. As shown in FIG. 6, a client navigation path 150permits a client to register using a new client selection option 152from the default page 134. After appropriate information concerning theclient is entered using a series of screens, a username and password forthe client is generated at the primary server 22A. The informationrequired from the client can include last name, first name, middleinitial, mailing address, telephone number, a personal password, and ane-mail address. Of course some of this information can be omitted,particularly if it has already been provided to the SQL client database,a minimal requirement being that there be sufficient informationtransmitted from the client to distinguish from other clients. Asindicated in FIG. 5, the username and password information is notimmediately available to the client as described above in connectionwith FIG. 5, being subsequently e-mailed (with instructions for usingthe site). It will be understood that the subscriber can communicate thesubscriber's username or any other predetermined designation given tothe patient for permitting the client to complete the registrationprocess, which designation can serve as temporary authorization pendinggranting of the patient's username and password. Also, the client'spermanent password can be either chosen by the client or generated bythe server 22A. Once registered, patients have access from the defaultpage 134 and a client login window 154 to the subscriber's home page 146and the index page 148.

Most preferably, the initial client authorization is unique to eachpractitioner of the subscriber, each of the practitioner virtual homepages having a respective address that is terminated by thecorresponding authorization term, whereby the first screen that theclient sees is his practitioner's virtual home page. This page thenlinks to the document modules that the practitioner originally selectedduring the practitioner registration process.

In a preferred form, each client education article begins as follows:

“Welcome, <client's first name> <client's last name> to[systemowner].net. This client education material has been provided toyou by <practitioner's practice name>.″

Of course, many variations of the above may be appropriate. Anythingthat is stored in the practitioner/client database(s) cart be displayedon the document pages, so that they can be personalized messages.

Document Compilation

The converted documents are dynamically compiled in a process that firstreads the header field “WWW-Authenticate” for the username, that fieldreading “ . . . WWW-Authenticate username :password . . . ” An exemplaryform of the corresponding record of the SQL database reads:

Username|firstname|lastname|mi|lastlogin date|etc.

A suitable select statement for extracting the client's name is:

    Select “fname” “mi” “lname” from table where username=″X″.

An exemplary HTML coding for each web-page is:

Welcome <%fname%> <%lname%> to Ssytemowner.net This web-site has beenprovided by      <%practicename%>  Here is the article text . . .       . . . . . .        . . . . . . text end.

Basically, the primary server 22A looks at each page before sending itout and replaces the placeholders or variables with the correspondinginformation from the database table. Any fields of the database can beinserted into the documents. The pre-processed pages are then sent tothe client's browser to complete each of the client's requests. Suitableprogram code for directing this dynamic compilation is provided in theSMTP program module of the primary server 22A, the details of such codebeing within the skill of the web-server programming art.

Although the present invention has been described in considerable detailwith reference to certain preferred versions thereof, other versions arepossible. Therefore, the spirit and scope of the appended claims shouldnot necessarily be limited to the description of the preferred versionscontained herein.

1. A method for providing data to clients of multiple subscribers on adistributed computer network comprising the steps of: (a) maintaining amain document set database comprising text-containing documents for useby multiple subscribers; wherein, the main document set is stored on adistributed computer network; (b) forming for each of the multipleunrelated subscribers a corresponding home document set comprisingtext-containing documents selected from the main document set database;(c) automatically modifying the text of at least some of thetext-containing documents of each home document set so that the modifiedtext of at least some of the text containing documents are differentfrom the text of the corresponding home document set selected fromdocuments in the main document set database; and (d) allowing access byclients of each subscriber to the modified documents of the subscriber'scorresponding home document set.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein thestep of modifying comprises including client-specific data in the text.3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of including client specificdata comprises dynamically adding the client specific data uponclient-requested access.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step ofmodifying comprises including subscriber-specific data in the text. 5.The method of claim 4, wherein the step of including practitionerspecific data comprises dynamically adding the practitioner-specificdata upon client requested access.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein thestep of modifying comprises including both client specific data andsubscriber-specific data in the text.
 7. The method of claim 6, whereinthe step of including client specific data and subscriber-specificcomprises dynamically adding the client specific data uponclient-requested access.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step ofmodifying comprises modifying all the selected documents of at least oneof the home document sets.
 9. (canceled)
 10. The method of claim 1,wherein the step of forming comprises selecting documents from the maindocument set database for inclusion in home document sets by areas ofpractice of the subscribers.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein the stepof forming the home document sets comprises including in the plural homedocument sets some documents that are the same as documents in the maindocument set prior to modification.
 12. A method for a practitioner toprovide access to selected text containing documents on a distributedcomputer network to clients of the practitioner, the method comprisingthe steps of: (a) forming a home document set for storage in computermemory by identifying only a portion of documents maintained by a hostin a main document set database, the identified documents includingtext-containing documents; (b) providing to clients a password to accessthe home document set of the practitioner; (c) enabling accessingclients to select and receive documents of the home document set; (d)automatically modifying the text of at least some of the identifieddocuments prior to receipt thereof by the accessing clients so that themodified documents are different than the corresponding documents in themain document set database.
 13. The method of claim 12, wherein at leasta portion of the step of automatically modifying is added dynamicallyupon selection by an accessing client.
 14. The method of claim 12,wherein the step of automatically modifying comprises includingclient-specific, practitioner-specific, or both client specific andpractitioner-specific data in documents being accessed.
 15. A system forproviding data to clients of multiple subscribers on a distributedcomputer network, the system comprising: (a) a primary computer havingassociated primary memory, the primary computer being programmed forreceiving text data files from a provider and storing counterpartsthereof in the primary memory; (b) means for receiving, over thecomputer network, requests for inclusion of selected ones of the textdata files in respective home document sets of the multiple subscribers;(c) the primary computer being programmed for permitting authorizedclients of the multiple subscribers to access and receive over thecomputer network the text counterpart data files of the home documentsets of the multiple associated subscribers; (d) means for automaticallymodifying the text of at least some of the text data files prior toreceipt thereof by the clients wherein the modified text of at leastsome of the text data files documents are different from the counterparttext data files corresponding documents in the primary memory; and (e)means for transmitting particular ones of the modified text of at leastsome of the data files over the computer network to requestingsubscribers.
 16. The system of claim 15, wherein the clients are ofpractitioners associated with particular ones of the subscribers, thesystem further comprising: (a) means for receiving client-specific,practitioner-specific, or both client-specific and practitioner-specificdata over the computer network; and (b) the means for automaticallymodifying comprises the primary computer being programmed for includingat least some of the client-specific and/or practitioner-specific datain transmissions of accessed data files to the clients.
 17. The methodof claim 1, wherein the step of maintaining the main document databasecomprises receiving source document data from a source separate from thesubscribers.
 18. The method of claim 1, wherein the main documentdatabase comprises documents not provided by any subscriber. 19.(canceled)
 20. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of modifyingcomprises including practitioner-specific data in documents beingaccessed.
 21. The method of claim 14 wherein the step of modifyingcomprises including practitioner-specific data in documents beingaccessed.
 22. The system of claim 15, wherein the clients are ofpractitioners associated with particular ones of the subscribers, thesystem further comprising: (a) means for receiving practitioner-specificdata over the computer network; and (b) the means for automaticallymodifying comprises the primary computer being programmed for includingat least some of the practitioner-specific data in transmissions ofaccessed data files to the clients.
 23. The system of claim 16, whereinthe clients are of practitioners associated with particular ones of thesubscribers, the system further comprising: (a) means for receivingpractitioner-specific data over the computer network; and (b) the meansfor automatically modifying comprising the primary computer beingprogrammed for including at least some of the practitioner-specific datain transmissions of accessed data files to the clients.
 24. A method forproviding data to clients of multiple subscribers on a distributedcomputer network comprising the steps of: (a) maintaining a maindocument set comprising text-containing documents for use by multiplesubscribers, wherein the main document set is stored on a distributedcomputer network; and (b) for each of the multiple subscribers,providing corresponding subscriber documents comprising modifiedtext-containing documents by automatically modifying the text of atleast some of the text-containing documents of the main document setwithout ever making the same modifications to the text of the maindocument set so that at least some of each subscriber's modifiedtext-containing documents are different from the corresponding documentsin the main document set, wherein clients of each subscriber have accessto the corresponding subscriber's modified text-containing documents.25. The method of claim 24, wherein the step of modifying comprisesincluding client specific data in the text.
 26. The method of claim 25,wherein the step of including client specific data comprises dynamicallyadding the client specific data upon client-requested access.
 27. Themethod of claim 24, wherein the step of modifying comprises includingsubscriber-specific data in the text.
 28. The method of claim 27,wherein the step of including practitioner-specific data comprisesdynamically adding the practitioner-specific data upon client-requestedaccess.
 29. The method of claim 24, wherein the step of modifyingcomprises including both client specific data and subscriber-specificdata in the text.
 30. The method of claim 29, wherein the step ofincluding client specific data and subscriber-specific comprisesdynamically adding the client specific data upon client-requestedaccess.
 31. The method of claim 24, wherein the step of modifyingcomprises modifying all the selected documents of at least one of thehome document sets.
 32. (canceled)